Variety of 1986

So once again I was not here for this lesson, so I'm going to do my best. 1986, from what I can tell from the internet, had a lot of hits. It looks to me like the top 100 charts were littered with poppy songs, not so much rock. Such as "West End Girls," and the fact that 12 of the top 20 songs have the word "love" in the title. So 1986 might have been a slow year, in the sense that it was characterized by romantic, feel-good pop rock songs. My favorite song that I see on here has to be "Rock me Amadeus" by Falco. I think they were a really unique band for their time and were good to listen to.

Liveaid

Unfortunately i was gone for a majority of the live aid movie. I did however get to watch the part with Queen. I thought that they had a good performance, I don't really know too much about what the concert was about, from what I heard it was in an effort to raise money to hunger. But anyway, Queen was good, I don't really know much more than that.

4 People we listened to last class

My favorite has to be U2, I still listen to those guys even to this day. I like how their music reflects the tribulations they were going through in Ireland. Actually, when I was about 12 I saw their Vertigo concert in Dallas. However, Bono I think has turned into too much of a pop star.

I didn't like syncronicity though, I'm a big fan of Sting but not the police. Their music is a little too poppy, and it just seems to drag on and on.

The romantics were crap too. Plus that guy had a weird music video and it made me feel uncomfortable.

I've always liked the talking heads too, except I didn't really like the song we listened to in class.

81 Favorite Song

I really enjoyed pretty much all of the 81 stuff that we listened to, primarily because a lot of what 103.5 Bob FM plays is from that late 70s early 80s time period. I'd have to say that my favorite was Stevie Nicks, one, because I think she's a phenomenal singer, and 2, she's really good looking. I preferred her when she was on her own, but her Fleetwood Mac stuff was good too. Edge of Seventeen was my favorite song, the music video was pretty cool too. She has a fantastic voice.

70s Synopsis

Sorry this blog is coming in late, I guess I missed the memo again.

Anyway the 70s were far different from the 60s and the 80s.the decade saw the rise of disco, which became one of the biggest genres of the decade, especially in the mid-to-late 1970s. Rock music played an important part in the Western musical scene, with punk rock thriving throughout the mid to late 1970s.^[2] Other sub-genres of rock, particularly glam, hard rock, progressive, art rock, and heavy metal achieved various amounts of success. Disco soon split off and led the way for a disco/rock hybrid, synth rock. Disco and Rock competed heavily in this decade, backed by the emergence of various sub-genres of the two. The Ramones and Blondie highlighted the Punk Rock genre, ZZ top and Aerosmith shaped other rock genres.

70s vs. 80s Musical Perspective

I'd have to say that if I were to live in one of the two, it would have to be the 70s. Musically as well, I prefer the 70s. I mean it's pretty hard for any decade to compete with the likes of Aerosmith and ZZ top. Not to mention that the 70s was what I would call "real" rock. It was your typical heavy guitar, heavy drums, and heavy vocals type of music. The 80s on the other hand contained a lot of funk and electronic elements, which was a little to pop-like for me. The 80s was a lot softer than the 70s when it comes to the type of rock that was played during the two time periods. My favorite 80s artist would have to be Pat Benatar, very catchy sons.

Punk Vs. Rock

Sorry this blog is owing in so late, I must have missed the memo that we had to do it. Anyway I'll try my best to remember exactly what I thought about the various punk and rock bands we listened to.

The band that stands out the most would have to be the Ramones, probably because they played a big role in that movie that we watched. I liked them because they contained the punk craziness, while still playing good music.  The Ramones are actually a band that I've listened to, mainly thanks to Blake. My favorite song is definitely Blitzkrieg Bop, even though I wouldn't really call that punk.

The late 70s presented itself with a Punk vs. Rock war, and I would say Punk won. As you mentioned, people are always looking for the underground music, which in this case was Punk. And while rock was still prolific throughout this period, I think Punk took the medal.

Bergdorf- love/hate

I hate to say this but I think ABBA is really catchy. All of their songs are singalong songs, and while their music seems girly and not my taste, I can't deny that it's catchy. I actually watched the ABBA musical, hate to say it, but once again it was pretty good.
I liked The Clash surprisingly too, I've never really been a huge fan of punk, but they were more "progressive rock." The Clash seemed to be excellent musicians excellent guitar, very well-polished keyboards that surprisingly work , rhythmic bass, and fast paced drumming. I like the face paced element they had in their music, but it wasn't too fast paced to just be annoying.

Bergdorf-music of 1975

My dad actually graduated high school around this time an he said that he absolutely hates going to high school reunions because all of the music played is disco. While the late 70s and early 80s was when disco was born, he says that nobody really seemed to actually like disco.

Including me. I did enjoy the funk song we listened to by the Average White band, however funk/disco isn't really my taste. Plus I hate the bee gees. I DO like Queen though. A lot. I felt as if he was able to make the perfect blend of rock and glamour. The Eagles too. If I were living back in 75 I would definitely have been a rock and roll guy, not a funk guy.

Bergdorf- Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers

I distinctly remember what somebody said at the beginning of the documentary, and that was "every Tom Petty song sounds like a classic." And it's true, Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers didn't get to be so famous by making mediocre music. Still, it's staggering that every song the perform is special, unique, and sounds like a classic.
I thought the documentary was really entertaining. I had a vague image of what Tom Petty looked like but really had no idea what his personality was like and it seems to me like he was a cool guy. He was obviously driven, and incredibly talented, but I guess the hippo side of him irradiated a more relaxed presence. The story about how the band got together was probably my favorite part from the movie. How they went to interview for a drummer and the drummer says he has a buddy who can play the guitar. And then how the guitar guy comes out with this cruddy guitar and looks like he has no idea what he's doing, then proceeds to make Tom's jaw drop. I think it's amazing that a group as famous as they are came together originally as a garage band from Gainesville.
I personally enjoy Tom Petty's music. Perhaps I wouldn't go out of my way to listen to it, but if it's on then I would definitely enjoy listening. I would call him music blues-southern rock, if there is such a thing. It's obviously got some southern country elements to it, but the construction of the lyrics and the tempo in certain songs lean more towards blues, in my opinion.

Bergdorf Blog Post 1

So prior to leaving Mr. A's class we had kind of been all over the place. We had been learning about the first British invasion but somehow transitioned into REM. Since we vaguely covered REM before I left, I'll just talk about the British Invasion.

We listened to both Zeppelin 1 and 2 and some sporadically selected songs by the Rolling Stones. I was not a fan at all of Zep 1, there was just something about the songs and their fluidity, o lack thereof, in the album that really gave me a bad taste in my mouth. I like Led Zeppelin, but apparently I've only acquainted myself with their hits. Zep 2 didn't do anything for me either. The songs were just so long and felt so drug-out that I couldn't ever get into the rhythm. Not to mention that, in my opinion, a lot of the songs sounded the exact some. I have a huge amount of respect for the band , but their early stuff was just not my type. Same goes with the Rolling Stones, I love the Stones' later stuff but their early albums and single sounded atrocious to me. And what made the early Stones' stuff so much more unbearable was McJagger's shrill vocals. Granted he turned into a much better vocalist later in his career, his early stuff wasn't my favorite either.

Now, moving onto the last two days I've been in your class.

Funny story actually, Don Henley's daughter, Annabelle, was my best friend in pre-school. I used to live in highland park in Dallas, however, she never let me come over and meet Don. Plus I was like 6 anyway. But yeah I've always had an appreciation for the Eagles as musicians. Like you said, their vocals are very well-thoughtout and add a huge dimension to their music apart from the instrumentals. Their vocals are enough to consider them country rock in my books, however I do think they use some blues elements in some of their songs, especially "Hotel California." Perhaps it's not blues, but it doesn't sound like country to me. Marshall Tucker Band: One hit wonders, "Can't you  see" is a pretty awesome song, definitely has some Southern Elements. The Band: I felt like I had heard of them before, turns out they have made a lot of my favorite songs, "The Weight" and "Up on Cripple Creek" especially.

MY favorite songs

Now I'm going to apologize in advance, I don't know the guy's name. He's the guy with long hair, beard, seems to really like rocking out, we saw his video of his performance. Anyway, yeah that guy. I thought his songs were the best. They were a nice blend between Heavy rock and Indie. SO pretty much like a perfect blend of rock. I couldn't tell you who they were buy, or even remotely what they sounded like, but it sounded good.

My Two Songs

So I don't exactly know how grading works now that I'm switched out of your class, but just to make sure I'll write this week's blogs.

The two songs that I played were very very different fro each other. But, incase you don't know me, my taste in music ranges from two poles that are also very very different from each other. The first song that I played was "Unbelievers" by Vampire weekend, which is probably my favorite song right now. It's catchy, upbeat, and has some nice vocals. The other song I play was "Lodi Dodi" by Snoop Dogg, which was on my favorite album, "Doggystyle." Both songs seemed to be enjoyable by everyone else and I got some pretty nice feedback from a few people. What I hoped what most people took from my two song selections was that my taste in music is very broad and that I'm pretty much open to anything.

Grimes

I hope you read my last blog. That's the important one. This will be the last blog I write in your class, I'm sad to say that as of Wednesday I will not be in your class anymore. Hopefully Bergdorf is at least kind of chill. My last blog is dedicated to the worst musician of all time, Grimes. Seriously go check out some of her stuff, it's terrible. I guarantee you'll be so entranced with how crappy it is that you can't stop listening. Like how does she make money off this crap, apparently she has a big following too. So dissapointing. See ya Mr A

Please Read This One

If you don't read any of the rest of my blogs for the entire year, please read this one. What you said today, in fact, the entire discussion we had today really hit home to me. I realize that a lot of my time is pretty booked, and unfortunately because of that I usually wait until the last minute to write all of my blogs; notice that they're all submitted close to midnight on Friday. Now this blog, for a change, I will be writing in leu of an influx of free time brought about by my Senior year starting to wrap up. Anyway, back to the discussion. The discussion was about cheating, but the particular area I chimed in on was allocative resources being used in certain places. As a top 2% student (yes my class rank is in the teens believe it or not), a two-sport varsity captain, and an officer in 3 different clubs, my most valuable resource is my time. In fact I have such little time and such poor organizational skills that I managed to completely forget about a Stanford interview I was supposed to have an hour ago, thus inspiring me to try try to stay on top of things like my blogging. I attested that since my future career does not lie in the field of English or liberal arts I do not need to allocate more time than necessary to English. I've always been a sufficient writer when I put my effort into it, you even mentioned that you can tell from my blogs that if i decided to "turn it on" with my blogging I could be a really good writer. Well I'm turning it on for this blog. My writing style has always been criticized by past English teachers as being immature. I, however, say that my failure to be formulaic and boring is not a weakness in my writing, but a strength that makes it more entertaining. Possibly too much Vonnegut influence has turned my writing voice into one that utilizes sarcasm and dry humor, on top of some drawn out syntax, to make my writing more bearable to read. I'm perfectly happy with the way I write and the type of vocabulary that I employe while writing. Actually my seemingly elegant vocabulary mixed with unusual syntactical structure might be the reason that English teachers don't really like the way that I write. It has created a means for me to write essays upon essays that are so shallow in analytical enlightenment yet receive solid grades thanks to a disguise in my writing style. So in that respect it has built up a little bit of academic complacency in the way I take on English. I love writing these blogs; when I sit down and really think about what I'm going to say in these blogs, rather than pumping out 2 blogs to beat my midnight deadline, I thoroughly enjoy them. It allows for me to display to you what I can do. Why would I care about impressing you? Because you're awesome. Not just as a teacher. You're genuinely an individual that I really admire for your intellectual ability. I envy your wit, especially, and the way that you formulate debates. Ideologically we have polar opposite views on things, and I think that's why I really like you as a person. You're somebody that I can actually have a debate with that never becomes hostile, and at the end of the debate you always manage to provide new insight for me that I didn't have prior knowledge of, which I can't say about a lot of people. I love other's insight for I am a very opinionated person who's opinion is also very malleable. Often times in arguments the person I am arguing with is so hard headed that rather than offering new insight that could disprove my opinion, they just drill what they already know, and what I already know that they know. Rather than drilling in old news, you, on the other hand, typically respond with a "well what about..." And often times I say am caught deeply searching for a just as insightful rebuttal. I can tell that you are a very, very, intelligent person, and that we have both been influenced by very different things that rightly have altered our opinions. Music has had a huge impact on your life, something that I haven't had the slightest exposure to, but I want to know what you have to say because of that discrepancy between us. I think the reason that people like Gavin, and the other guys that sit around me, enjoy your philosophical discussions so much are because they are intellectually stimulating. We're all athletes and enjoy competition, your discussions and debates are like small competitions, battling back and forth with arguments and counterarguements. This is something that very few students are ever exposed to in the academic system, and that's why I love this class so much. Calculus, Physics, Government, etc. all just drill facts into our brains. Facts, facts, facts, but no opinions. Nowhere to argue or display what WE know. But English -yes I just made a full circle- gives us a little glimpse of that, writing in particular. See writing is where we can express who we are through the particular writing voice that we've all adapted into. When I mentioned earlier that sometimes my analytical essays lack a sense of maturity in writing style, I attest that's me trying to break free of the conformity that is our academic system. This conformity is why I might not put full effort into English as a class. With my voice I can express my opinion, primarily through sarcasm which hints that I don't particularly care about what Poet A meant when he said blah blah blah. I'm so used to allocating my resources to achieve a particular grade, usually a 100. My brain is trained into simply getting something done, black and white, which is what a lot of my classes are designed to do, especially English. And since English isn't what I deem as necessary to achieve the highest grade possible, I allocate more of my resources, time especially, into Calculus, Physics, and sports. I hope that after you read this you are more aware of the kind of opinion I have. Like I said, I really enjoy having discussions with you and hope that you have some comments on the viewpoints I have provided. Your opinion is something that I value because of the philosophical weight that it carries, and maybe years from now I can come back and visit, and we can have a drink and talk about trivial things that only matter in how they shape our opinions. Thanks Mr. A.

Justin Bieber is a _____

Can we talk about this guy for a moment. This little boy is the biggest POS I've ever seen in my life. He drives drunk, like really drunk, gets pulled over, shows no remorse about it and instead tries to bribe the cop by saying how he's Justin Bieber, which is also illegal. I mean this little boy puts a serious damper on the music industry, he steals listeners away from artists who actually have talent and is a really horrible role model. Seriously, I'll give you $50 if you can sit through a whole album of his and not completely lose your temper. By the end of a single song I wanted to go destroy every last trace of that song from every computer/cd in the entire world. I was pretty riled up about it.

Class Discussion: Draft/What would it take to join the military

I've always been really patriotic, Merica ya wooooohhh let's kill some terrorists. Both of my Grandfathers fought in wars, my Dad's dad in the Korean war and my Mom's dad in WWII. And, to be honest, I've always really wanted to serve my country through military involvement. However, by military involvement I don't mean fighting, or even having to hold a gun, I was thinking more engineering or strategy. I don't think I could ever be able to fight, more specifically be shot at. Plus you hear so much about people just being completely changed and traumatized from the experience that, while they didn't actually die, they're so distraught that they wish they had died. I just couldn't do it, and if there were a draft, I'd probably book it to Australia.

Jay Z

So once again I haven't really been listening to much. I did go through and listen to the entire Magna Carta album by Jay Z. I was dissapointed. There was so much hype surrounding the album an I never really listened to it all the way through. Most of the songs were pretty crappy. I enjoyed holy grail... And that was about it. The rest all ha shitty beats and I just felt that Jay Z's flow was off. I've always had a lot of respect for Jay Z as an artist, but I'm going to have to say Magna Carta was sub par.

Big Star

I did in fact pay attention to most of the movie. However, it was hard to follow because I never really paid attention to the names, so by the end they kept referring to these names and I really had no idea what they were saying. For the duration that I did understand it seemed sad. These guys were obviously incredible musicians but they never really hit it big. I really thought that it was cool when they were talking about all of these big name bands, I don't remember the names besides them, that started up as just teen garage bands. Thought that was pretty cool.

Talent

I really enjoyed the discussion we had the other day in class about talent, most specifically my horrible singing. You had some really awesome insight that I had never thought about before. But I just can't say that there's no talent. I've been an athlete my whole life, and I've competed against people who've had the worst work ethic, the worst attitude, the worst fundamentals, yet they're still phenomenal athletes. I do hate word talent, it sounds like an excuse. "well, they were more talented than us." Bullcrap. Talent should never be used as a reason for why somebody beat you. Like you said, hard work surpasses any amount of talent. But I'd still have to attest that it exists, I bear witness to numerous instances where somebody has just been talented. But more often than not they don't grow that talent. Would you agree with that?

What I'm Listening to

I'm going to be honest with you, I haven't really been listening to much lately. Actually not at all. I just simply haven't had time. Yeah I still play the filthiest dubstep I can find while doing my Calculus homework, but all that crap sounds the same anyway. I did happen to listen to some of 101.5s late night broadcast on the radio. Oh my, it was horrible. Past 10 PM 101.5, an awesome alternative radio station, turns into a heavy metal station. It's so bad. Just the genre itself, I don't understand how people can listen to that. Obviously, I respect their opinion, but seriously it hurts my ears.

Elephant

If you remember, the other day I told you how the song "elephant" by tame Impala sounds exactly like John Lennon. I've been listening to that song a lot recently. I also listened to the album but it was pretty bad. That song is the epitome of the kind of music that I like to listen to: sick instrumentals with "chill" vocals. And by chill I mean vocals that you don't actually need to listen to.

Mr. A's Album

It was a very interesting album. Overall I enjoyed it very much and thought it was a very good album. It was interesting in the fact that I don't know how I would classify the album. It did posses some rock elements in the guitar and vocals, however, I couldn't call it rock. Indie rock, maybe. But even then the vocals were very soft and carried a mellow atmosphere. I thought that the second side of the vinyl contained a more rock-vibe, however even then it was still more.... indie, I guess, than rock. I would suggest this album to anybody who enjoys listening to some relaxing, comforting, and well orchestrated music.